Russian forces are razing the already battered city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine to the ground and sending waves of assault units to overwhelm outgunned Ukrainian troops. After months of brutal fighting, the Russian military is threatening to cut off a vital supply line to the city, which could render further defense impossible.
As Gen Oleksandr Syrsky assumes his role as Ukraine’s top military commander — after a broad shake-up of army leadership — he could soon be confronted again with the grim calculus that has been a feature of the two-year war: When does the cost of defending ground outweigh any benefit gained by inflicting pain on the enemy?
It is a bloody equation that Syrsky has had to try to work out many times as the commander of ground forces in eastern Ukraine, and it is one that critics — including US military officials — contend he has not always gotten right, particularly in the battle for Bakhmut.
Assessing that strategy will be only part of the “renewal” that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was necessary when he dismissed his commanding general, Valery Zaluzhny, on Thursday and named Syrsky to replace him. Zelenskyy also named five generals and two colonels he intends to promote as part of the sweeping overhaul.
Ukraine’s military challenges go well beyond any single battle. US assistance, urgently needed, remains in doubt. Ukrainian troops are exhausted, and they lack weapons and ammunition. Air defence systems, crucial to protecting civilians from Russian missiles, are being steadily exhausted by repeated bombardments.
US officials assess that, without replenishment, Ukraine has enough air defences to last until only next month.
And Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a blunt message Thursday night in an interview with Tucker Carlson, saying Ukraine would not regain territory and that it was time to make a deal.
Western military analysts have suggested that 2024 will be a rebuilding year for Ukraine, and Syrsky will need to figure out how best to employ soldiers to hold back Russian offensives while generating new and effective fighting forces. Before Ukraine’s leaders think of regaining ground, though, they must first hold what they have — and preventing Russian advances is complicated by critical shortages of soldiers and ammunition.
Western officials and military experts have warned that without US assistance, a cascading collapse along the front is a real possibility this year.
It would still be at least a couple of months before the lack of renewed aid has a widespread effect, they say. But without it, they add, it’s hard to see how Ukraine will be able to maintain its current positions on the battlefield.
By next month, Ukraine could struggle to conduct local counterattacks, and by early summer, its military might have difficulty rebuffing Russian assaults, the officials and analysts say.
However, officials also assess that Russia would struggle to quickly build enough capability to conduct a major offensive across eastern Ukraine. Instead, Russian forces would most likely move forward in a clumsy disjointed way but with a high threshold for casualties among their own troops.
On Friday, the Kremlin dismissed the Ukrainian leadership change as inconsequential. “We don’t believe this is a factor that can change the course of the special military operation,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists, using Moscow’s phrase for the war. “It will continue until all of its goals are achieved.”
Still, Ukraine has managed to fend off doomsday scenarios in the past, most notably when it drove Russian forces from Kyiv in the first months of the war.
The Pentagon said that the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen CQ Brown Jr, spoke with Syrsky on his first full day on the job and discussed “the latest battlefield assessments.”
In his first public comments since his appointment, Syrsky said his immediate priority would be “the fastest and most rational distribution and delivery of everything necessary for combat units” to counter Russian assaults.
He vowed to put troops’ “lives and health” at the forefront of battlefield decisions, working to maintain “a balance between fulfilling combat missions and restoring units.”
With his comments, Syrsky may have been responding to critics who say he has been too willing to sacrifice soldiers to achieve questionable military goals.
In announcing the overhaul Thursday, Zelenskyy also spoke of the need to address the needs of soldiers in the cauldron of battle. While there are almost 1 million people in the military, Zelenskyy said, “the majority of them have not felt the front line in the same way as the minority who are actually at the forefront, actually fighting.”
“This means that we need a different approach to rotations in particular,” he said. “A different approach to front-line management. A different approach to mobilisation and recruitment. All this will give more respect to the soldier. And restore clarity to actions in the war.”
But Zelenskyy offered little detail about how the overhauled leadership would meet his goals, and he did not explain where the previous commander’s team had fallen short.
Zelenskyy’s critics say that he has avoided making politically unpopular decisions and that he has failed to address the challenges surrounding efforts to overhaul and reinvigorate the mobilisation process. - The New York Times
Marc Santora
The writer is a reporter at New York Times Digital
Eric Schmitt
The writer is a senior writer with TNYT
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